


Waking Up

by Kiraly



Category: Radioactive - Imagine Dragons (Song)
Genre: Cyborgs, Gen, Memory Loss, Post-Apocalypse, Pre-OT3, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-06 23:09:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18860839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiraly/pseuds/Kiraly
Summary: Error. Power supply disconnected. Initiating emergency shutdown protocol.Data storage offline.Communications offline.Life support offline.Wake up





	Waking Up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amyfortuna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amyfortuna/gifts).



**_Error. Power supply disconnected. Reconnect power supply or emergency shutdown protocol will initiate._ **

**_Error. Power supply disconnected. Reconnect power supply or emergency shutdown protocol will initiate._ **

**_Error. Power supply disconnected. Reconnect power supply or emergency shutdown protocol will initiate._ **

**_Error. Power supply disconnected. Initiating emergency shutdown protocol._ **

**_Data storage offline._ **

**_Communications offline._ **

**_Consciousness suppression module offline._ **

_What_

**_Life support offline._ **

_Wait what_

**_Disengaging door seals._ **

Red light pierced the black. Metal groaned. The door slid aside and she fell forward, choking on dusty air and blinking against the brightness. A cold metal cylinder pressed sharply into her forehead.

“Don’t. Move.”

The words found meaning in her memory, as did the cold metal: Gun. Dangerous. Her memory supplied no data about _how_ she knew. She held still. She wondered if respiration counted as movement in this case. She could stop that, too, but it would make her body go offline.

“Who are you? How’d you get in there? Who else knows about this place?”

Another memory search. This one came up with nothing. “Unknown.” One word answered all three questions. Efficient. The dry croak of her voice indicated long disuse.

The tone of the other voice, the one holding a gun to her head, indicated impatience. “You fucking with me right now? Really?” The gun prodded a little harder.

Her eyes were starting to adjust. She couldn’t see much without turning her head: dirt-crusted metal floor, dirt-crusted boots with lumpy patches on the toes, and clean hands—also metal—braced against the ground. Her hands, she realized.

“Well?” The gun-holder was getting impatient. “Gonna talk, or do I use this?”

She was saved from answering by a set of footfalls off to the left. “What’s all the noise in—blood and sand! Trigger, what are you _doing?_ Who is _that?”_

“Stay back!” Trigger’s grip on the gun must have tightened, because it pushed her head back. She could now see battered canvas pants from the knee down, and some kind of hallway if she moved her eyes as far to the left as they would go. “I don’t know who—or _what_ this is, but if it doesn’t start talking soon I’m gonna see if it has gears for brains.”

“You can’t just go around shooting people!” The other person said. Their voice was higher than Trigger’s, softer around the edges. “Even if...rust me, what _is_ that? Did they just come out of cryo?” The footsteps continued past her, and a hollow metallic _clang_ sounded. “Huh. It doesn’t look like a freezer. Some kind of stasis box? There are wires going _everywhere…”_

There was more clanking. Trigger sighed. “Lu, I’m kinda in the middle of something here.”

The clanking stopped. “Oh, right.” Another set of boots came to join Trigger’s. They were just as worn and dirty, though much smaller. One of them tapped a jittery rhythm on the floor. “Why don’t you just ask them nicely instead of pointing a gun at their head? So rude, Trigs.”

_“Lu.”_

“Trigger, come on. They haven’t even tried to get away.”

“That’s ‘cuz I have a _gun pointed at its head!_ Blood and sand, Lu, if it’s some new kinda Enforcer—”

“Since when,” Lu said, their voice gone suddenly quiet, “Has an Enforcer ever been a match for me?”

Silence stretched for a long moment. The boot stopped tapping. Trigger sighed. “Fine.”

The pressure against her forehead lessened, then disappeared altogether. “Thank you, Trigger, that’s better. Sorry about all this.” A hand slipped under her chin and tipped her face up. “Let’s get a look at you.”

There was no point in resisting. Trigger was still there with the gun. And she wasn’t sure if she was meant to offer violence anyway. Somewhere in the background, her mental processes were running analysis on everything: their speech patterns, the words they were saying, even the dirt on their boots. She could feel her thoughts shifting, adapting to the situation. Some instinct provided responses more human than machine. But there was a hole where her memory was supposed to be. Every piece of information brought more questions than answers.

So she allowed the touch, allowed her eyes to meet the ones looking down into hers. And then she didn’t want to look away.

She was certain she had seen faces before. Not that her memory provided any faces in particular. But she _had_ seen faces, and she was equally certain that none of them compared to this one. Freckles clustered like stars over brown skin, highlighting sharp cheekbones and a narrow chin. One of the eyes was brown, too, peacefully ordinary in the shadow of its black brow. The opposite brow was split by a pale scar, threaded from forehead to chin. It drew attention to the other, unsettling eye: the blue of a cold morning.

How did she know what cold was? Or morning?

The thought dropped to the wayside before she could pursue it, because the face—Lu’s face—was smiling at her. “Wow. Someone is gorgeous.”

All other thoughts dropped to the wayside, too.

 _“Lu!”_ Trigger said again, sounding even more annoyed. “Stop flirting with the robot!”

“We don’t know they’re a robot,” Lu said, breaking their gaze. “The facial structure looks remarkably human. Not totally symmetrical. You have a mole right there on your cheek, did you know?” The touch was unexpectedly cool—she looked down and saw that Lu’s left hand was metal, just like hers.

Lu kept going with their analysis. “Artificial arms, obviously. I don’t recognize the make, but it’s elegant work. Breathing, or a really convincing imitation. No head hair, but that could mean anything.” They rested a hand on her head, absently, and rubbed their fingers back and forth. “Feels like skin.”

Trigger shook their head. “Now who’s rude, Lu? If you think it’s a person, why are you just grabbing it?”

“Oh!” Lu withdrew their hand. _That_ one wasn’t metal at all, but warm skin. “Sorry, I get carried away sometimes. Let’s try this again.” She held out her hand—the flesh one—and said, “Hi, I’m Lu! She/her, scrapper by day and inventor by night. I can strip anything down—” Trigger groaned, “Okay, _fine,_ I can take anything apart. And then I can put it back together, better than it was.” She waved her hand at Trigger. “Your turn.”

Now that she could look around freely, she saw that Trigger’s boots weren’t the only big part about them. They stood nearly two heads taller than Lu, with broad shoulders and arms muscled to match. Their frown was not as nice to look at as Lu’s smile. “Trigger, they/them,” they grumbled. “Sharpshooter. Muscle.”

“By which they mean, they can also take anything apart,” Lu added.

“Means if you hurt Lu, I’ll tear your fucking arms off.”

“And it would be a shame to ruin that craftsmanship,” Lu said. “So, you are…?”

The outstretched hand and the smile demanded an answer. But there were so few available. She swallowed. “Designation unknown. Occupation unknown. Pronouns: she, her.”

“See, Trigger?” For some reason, Lu was beaming. “She can talk, and she has pronouns. Definitely points in her favor.”

“No name, though,” Trigger said. “Like an Enforcer. And all this—” they nodded at the room around them, “Something off about it. What aren’t you telling us?”

If she knew what she wasn’t telling them, she would tell it. “There’s...a hole. In here.” She reached up and tapped her head. “Damaged memory. Or missing.”

Trigger and Lu exchanged a look. “Storm damage,” Lu said. “Has to be. We thought this place was sealed tight, but…” She looked around. “Maybe some outside component got zapped, messed up her memory. Means she’s definitely not an Enforcer.”

“Enforcer?” They kept saying that word like it should mean something.

Trigger sighed. “Something you don’t wanna meet, stranger. Okay,” they nodded at Lu as though reaching a decision. “We can keep her. But what are we supposed to call her?”

“You have anything left in that memory of yours?” Lu asked. “Something like a name? Or is it all just ghosts in the code?”

She searched her memory. Error. Power supply disconnected. Shutdowns, an opening door. The feeling that she should know more than she knew. “Ghosts,” she decided. “No names.”

“Hmm. All right. Ghost it is, then.” Lu held out her hand again. “C’mon, Ghost. Let’s finish our scrapping and get out of here.”

The hand was warm, like the smile that so caught her. She knew, without knowing why, that her own hands were much stronger. She could crush the delicate bones of Lu’s wrist without even trying. Without meaning to.

Ghost reached up and took the hand she was offered. Held it so, so gently. She let Lu pull her to her feet.

 

* * *

 

“Here, Ghost. Take these to the truck and strap ‘em down like I showed you.”

Trigger was much easier to get along with now that they didn’t have a weapon pointed at her. They still _had_ lots of weapons, and Ghost was sure they could use them. But something in their manner had eased once she showed her willingness to help with the work of stripping the bunker.

The room where she had been— _sleeping_ wasn’t the word for it, but close enough—was the last in a series. Most of the others held little of use: bolted-down furniture, moldering fabric, empty storage cartons. The scrappers ignored all of this in favor of the last room and its much more interesting contents.

“I wish we could take this whole thing back,” Lu was saying as Ghost returned from the truck. She was up to her elbows in wires, exploring the hardware on the back of Ghost’s former resting place. Discarded metal panels littered the floor. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Old tech, and in such good shape? I’m amazed it’s not all fried.” She shook her head admiringly. “I’m sure I could figure out what it’s for if I had a few days with it.”

“Won’t do any good if the next storm fries _you_ ,” Trigger said. They divided their time between hauling scrap to the truck and watching the sky. “Wind’s picking up. We should go soon.”

Lu frowned. “Guess we should. I just hate to leave all this. You never know what might come in handy.”

“You got the power source though,” Trigger said. “That’s the big one. We get that, we get out, we get home before the storm. You promised.”

“Suppose I did,” Lu said. She detached a few more wires from a box on the back of the machine. “And I got this, too. Looks like some kind of data storage? I’ve never seen anything like these hookups, but if I can get in, maybe it can tell us something about this place. And about our new friend.”

Ghost didn’t see why they would need a power source. Lu’s smile was bright enough to power any number of hidden bunkers.

As though they could read her thoughts, Trigger clapped a hand on Ghost’s shoulder and propelled her forward, putting space between her and Lu. “We’ll worry about what’s in your head later. C’mon.” Ghost allowed Trigger to steer her away, but she couldn’t help looking back. Lu cradled the data storage box in her hands, tilting her head to examine it more closely. Like its secrets would become hers, if only she looked at it from the right angle.

Dust rose in red plumes as the truck sped on its way. Ghost had watched the dark shape of the bunker recede behind them, gradually obscured by distance and dust until she could no longer see it at all. The rich rust color of the landscape was muted somewhat by the tinted goggles Trigger had given her. She looked more like the other two now, wrapped in a shapeless garment the color of dirt that mostly covered her metal arms. Inside the bunker it had been Lu and Trigger who stood out, all scuffed boots and patches against the smooth finish of the equipment. Out here, Ghost felt new and shiny and highly conspicuous.

“Keep that hat on,” Trigger said, eyeing her in the mirror as she fidgeted with the floppy brim. “Not sure if you’ll burn as much as me, but the sun can mess you up if you’re not used to it. Fry your brain.” Their pale skin showed signs of sun in the reddened, rough patches on their nose and the back of their neck.

“Better fried by the sun than by a storm,” Lu said, stretching languidly. She’d fallen into a doze almost as soon as they left the bunker, leaving Ghost and Trigger to fill the silence or live with it. They’d mostly kept quiet. “Speaking of which, I don’t like the look of that one, Trigs. Is it gaining on us?”

Ghost dragged her attention back to the window and the dark clouds creeping closer over the horizon. It was hard to judge the distance; the dust was much worse in that direction. She could more easily feel its approach as a building of pressure behind her.

“Not by much,” Trigger said. “Don’t like it though. Kicking up too much dust.”

“What’s the problem with dust?” Ghost asked. It was easier to ask questions with Lu awake. Trigger seemed to be a person of few words; to fill the chasm of Ghost’s missing memory, many words were needed. “Respiration?” She’d been given a breathing mask, too, like the others wore.

Lu twisted in her seat to look back. “Partly. The main problem is visibility, though. If we can’t see through it, there’s no telling what else is coming up behind us.”

“Oh.” Ghost watched the dust cloud. “You mean like that dark spot in the air?”

“What?!” Lu shoved her way into the back seat. “Where? Show me.”

Ghost pointed, conscious of Lu’s shoulder scraping against hers, metal on metal. She’d thought it was part of the storm, but it didn’t move like a cloud would. It had...edges. And the longer she looked at it, the clearer it got. She didn’t think she was imagining things. She didn’t think she was even capable of that.

Lu’s hiss of indrawn breath confirmed it. _“Fuck._ Trigger!” Her voice rose, sharp against the wind. “Company!”

Trigger swore. “How many?”

“One, maybe two—Ghost!” Lu turned to look at her. “You must have eagle eyes, to notice that. Is there more than one?”

The shape in the storm solidified into a silhouette that was almost human. Something about it set off alarm bells. _Warning. Danger. Warning danger warning danger warning danger._ She couldn’t pinpoint where the feeling came from, and she couldn’t have said how she knew the answer to Lu’s question. “It’s alone.” There was no way to tell that just by looking; any number of threats could be hiding in the storm behind it. But she knew.

“Right. Keep driving, Trigger,” Lu said. “I can handle one. Evasive maneuvers while I get it in my sights.”

“But…you’re...I thought _Trigger_ was the muscle!” The internal alarms were ringing louder. Ghost’s respiration and heart rate increased, pulse pounding in her ears. “Shouldn’t they—we need a _gun,_ something!” The shape drew closer. “It’s gaining on us!”

_Danger danger danger danger_

She grabbed Lu’s arm.

Lu shuddered. “Let go, Ghost.”

“But—” Lu was small, delicate. Fragile wrist bones. Ghost was a metal shell.

“Let _go.”_ Lu pushed her aside, roughly, a metallic screech as she wrenched her arm away. Ghost shrunk back, curled in on herself.  

 _“Lu.”_ Trigger’s voice was a warning from the front seat.

“Sorry.” No telling who the apology was for. “You don’t want to be touching me right now, Ghost. Get up front.”

Nothing made sense. The warning sirens screamed. _Danger danger danger wrong wrong wrong_

“Ghost, come _on.”_ A hand on her shoulder: Trigger’s, freed from the steering wheel. The touch jolted her out of her frozen state, and she scrambled over the seat. Trigger took their hand back, but made no protest when Ghost kept hold of their arm. She turned back to watch the shape of doom draw closer.

It flew ahead of the storm now, no longer bothering to hide. The dust blew away to reveal metal: arms, legs, human-shaped but misshapen, too bulky to mimic flesh. _Weapons,_ Ghost’s mind warned. Out of range, but not for long. From this distance, she couldn’t see its face.

In the backseat, Lu removed her goggles and set them aside. She braced one hand against the seat and raised the other—the metal one—to point at the approaching figure. Her expression was hard to read from this angle, but the scar tissue on her cheek twitched upward. A smile. “All right. Trigger, I’m going in.” She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the one turned toward Ghost glowed solid blue.

 _“What…?”_ Ghost breathed.

“Wait,” Trigger said.

The blue glow brightened. It spilled down Lu’s cheek, writing lines of light on her skin. It wrapped around her outstretched arm, illuminating seams and circuits. Energy crackled in the air. Every one of Lu’s tiny braids stood on end. Pressure built around them until Ghost thought the truck might explode.

But instead, their pursuer exploded.

A wave of force pushed Ghost backwards. The air left her lungs; Trigger caught her by the collar before she hit the windshield. She could see Lu slump, suddenly boneless, to the floor. The glow was gone. The sky behind them held nothing but storm clouds and sparks. Dust rolled in to choke the flames of the wreckage.

Distantly, Ghost became aware of Trigger speaking her name.

“Ghost. _Ghost._ You still with us?”

All her thoughts tumbled like windblown sand. The chasm in her memory felt bigger than ever. “What,” she gasped, placing her words carefully in order, “Was that?”

“Enforcer,” Trigger said. They loosened their grip on her shirt. “All right, Lu?”

Ghost swallowed hard. “Is she…?”

“Still alive,” Lu croaked from the back. “Blood and sand, I hate those things.”

“Lu!” Ghost peered over the seat. “What...what did you do?”

Lu pushed cracked her eyes open. “Ughh. Help me up?” There was no trace of the blue light. Even so, Ghost hesitated. Her pulse still hadn’t returned to normal, and her elevated respiration couldn’t be explained away by dust. She remembered Lu’s outstretched hand, remembered the fear of harming her. Now...fear shifted into another shape.

“Nevermind, I’m good,” Lu said. She swung her arm up onto the seat and used it to pull herself into a sitting position. “Trigs, are we gonna make it?”

“Almost there,” Trigger said. “Gonna drive straight into the shop.”

“Good, I want to unload this stuff.” Lu turned back to Ghost. “Look, I know I owe you...an explanation. I’ll tell you everything when we get where we’re going.”

Ghost leaned against the seat and wrapped her arms around her knees. Their cool, solid weight did little to comfort her. “And where is that?”

Lu smiled. “Home.”

 

* * *

 

Ghost’s first sight of their destination was actually an absence of sight. One minute, she was huddled in her seat, watching Lu while trying to look like she wasn’t. The next, everything went dark.

“It’s fine,” Trigger said. They must have had acute hearing, to notice Ghost’s sharp indrawn breath.

“No point in wasting power on lights for the tunnel. Makes it harder for anyone to find us,” Lu added. “And the walls are thick enough to block heat signatures, as well as protecting us from storm damage.”

Stone grated ahead of them. The light came back, paler than the red-tinged sunlight they’d left behind. Ghost looked out the window and saw rock walls give way to metal, small white lights embedded at regular intervals. Behind them, a panel rolled down to block the tunnel.

“Right,” Lu said, as soon as the truck came to a stop. She opened the door and hopped out, seemingly restored to her former energy. “Trigger, check the door seals. I’m going to start unloading. Since we’re already here, we might as well see what we’ve got while the storm blows through. Ghost, you can—”

“Lu.” For a single word, it carried a lot of disapproval.

“What?” Lu looked at Trigger, confused. Trigger jerked their chin in Ghost’s direction.

Ghost shrank back under the weight of their collective gaze. So far she’d gone along with what they asked of her—there was nothing difficult about loading a truck or following them to a place they said was safe. They had been nice to her. They had weapons, and they hadn’t used them on her. But she didn’t understand what was going on. The memory of the Enforcer falling from the sky played over and over, burned into her mind in a blaze of blue.

When Lu showed no sign of understanding what Trigger wanted, they sighed and threw up their hands. “She’s _scared._ Talk. To. Her.” They shouldered their gun and stomped off to check the door.

“Oh.” Lu watched Trigger’s retreating back for a moment. “Sorry, Ghost. I’m supposed to be the one who talks, but I keep getting caught up in—this.” She waved her hand at the scrap in the back of the truck. “Look, I promise I’m not going to...hurt you, or whatever it is you think. I only use the blue stuff on Enforcers.”

“But what _are_ they?” Ghost burst out. “What are you?” _What am I,_ she thought, but the words stayed inside.

Lu looked at her feet, absently rubbing her shoulder where metal met skin. “It’s...complicated. But I guess I did promise, didn’t I?” She stepped closer to the truck, but she made no move to touch Ghost, simply reached for the straps holding down the nearest piece of scrap. “Here. If you grab the data storage and come with me, I’ll show you my project. It’ll help you understand.”

Ghost followed slowly, hoping her reluctance didn’t show. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to know more about Lu. From the moment their eyes met, a spark of curiosity had formed, and the spark had grown into a flame. It was just that a part of her watched that fire and waited for someone to get burned.

It did nothing to ease her discomfort that the first thing she saw when she got out of the truck was the burned-out shell of some kind of vehicle. Piles of scrap metal radiated out from it, organized in some fashion Ghost couldn’t decipher. Other machines in various states of disassembly littered the floor. Lu ignored all of it and headed straight for the back corner. One wall held a row of cabinets, each tiny drawer labeled with the name of a piece of hardware. The other was taken up by a workbench. Some half-built device filled one side of it, spilling wires and circuit boards. More wires protruded from the wall behind it, most likely meant to connect devices to a pair of display screens. And next to those—

“A map?” Ghost asked, reaching up to touch the large piece of paper. She knew it by the marks, though the place names meant nothing to her. “Are we on it?”

“Here,” Lu said, moving Ghost’s hand until it pointed to a small red mark. “That’s us.”

There was no name written there, only the smudged ink. “And what are...those?” Ghost asked, pointing to a pair of larger dots with words written by them. Large red Xs had been drawn over the letters.

“Cities,” Lu said dismissively. She set the power source she’d been carrying down on the bench. “Not for the likes of us.”

“Why not?”

Lu sighed. Her back was to Ghost, shoulders hunched slightly as she leaned on the workbench. The deceptive frailty shone through again, the points of her elbows sharp against the light. “When they started modifying humans, they kept it small. A new arm to replace a missing one. A prosthetic leg that could actually connect to the nerves. Implanted devices to keep a heart going—they had those for a long time, so I’ve been told. After a while they got...ambitious, I guess. If they could fix a leg from the knee down, why not from the hip down? Could they replace both arms at once? Make an eye that connected to the brain like a natural one?”

For the first time, Ghost noticed a thin tracery of lines running up the left side of Lu’s neck. They were too even to be veins, too faint to be tattoos.

“They did what humans always do. They experimented.” Lu’s foot was tapping on the floor, a light staccato undercurrent to her words. “Lots of the experiments...failed. Badly. And when they succeeded, sometimes they didn’t get what they planned for.” She straightened up suddenly, let go of the bench. She caught the hem of her shirt instead, pulling it up and over her head. “So they tried to cover up those failures.”

Lu’s back was a roadmap, jagged scars and straight lines like circuits. The metal of her arm carried over in an uneven patch that covered a third of the space, tiny overlapping plates that molded to her body. As Ghost stared, Lu pulled a wire from the wall and hooked it to her chest. Then she reached back, pressed some hidden catch, and caught a small metal block as it dropped from her shoulder. It left behind a smooth and silvery hole.

“Unfortunately for them, we keep finding ways to stay alive.” Lu turned around.

Ghost tried not to stare at Lu’s bare chest, but it was impossible. It wasn’t the nudity—Lu wore an air of unconcern so thick she might as well have been fully dressed. It was the wire trailing from the port just below her collarbone, the metal plating that carried down her left side to where her ribcage ended. The scars that radiated over her remaining skin. The evidence, clear as day, of some wound so bad that it should have killed her.

“What did they—” Ghost found herself reaching for Lu and pulled her hand back. “They took your heart?”

“Replaced it with a battery-powered one. Top of the line,” Lu said, thumping her chest. Metal rang against metal. “Only, I was just a test case. Some poor sucker who no one cared about, blown to bits in an accident. They meant to take me apart again, use the tech for some rich man’s daughter once they knew the procedure worked.” There was nothing kind about Lu’s smile now. “I didn’t stick around for that part.”

Ghost shuddered. She wouldn’t have, either. “But what does that have to do with the Enforcers? And what you...can do?”

Lu turned back to the bench and started to work on the metal piece she’d removed. “It’s illegal, you know, having this many modifications. Doesn’t matter to the rich—they can buy their way out of it. But anyone else—they tried banning us, fining us, kicking us out. The cities have storm protection; without it, all our metal parts go haywire. But some of us got smart and banded together, found places we could be safe from the storms.” Lu gestured around at the room. “That’s when they started sending Enforcers after us.”

“But what are they?” Ghost asked. She set the data storage carefully on the bench so she could wrap her arms around herself. “It looked...person-shaped. But it flew.”

“Oh yeah, the flying is a right pain in the tailpipe. And the storm immunity—somehow they’re protected from storm damage, and they can use it against us. Get hit with one of their blasts, and ZAP! Kiss your circuits goodbye.” She shrugged. “I guess on the outside, they look like people. Sort of. But they’re not like us, not just...added onto. I think they build them from scratch.” Lu finished her tinkering and set the block in a holder on the edge of the work bench. “Battery charger,” she said, taking an identical block from the next slot over. “We have solar panels outside. Can’t store a charge long though, I have to swap them out.”

“Right.” Ghost wondered how her own stasis machine had been powered. Clearly some other way, if Lu was so excited about its power source. Then she realized they were straying from the subject. “Us?”

Lu stared at her. “What?”

“You said the Enforcers...they’re not like us.” Ghost held out her hands, watching the light play over their metal. “How do you know I’m not one?”

“Well, you haven’t tried to kill me yet,” Lu said, rolling her eyes.

“Lu…”

“No, seriously. They don’t stop to ask questions. They seek us out, they find us, they shoot at us. I haven’t even seen you access your weapons.”

“My _what?_ I don’t have weapons!”

“Uh-huh.” Lu caught one of Ghost’s wrists and tilted her arm to catch the light better. “That seam looks like a projectile compartment to me. And those panels on your palms probably shoot energy, assuming you have enough charge built up. Definitely too much bulk in your upper arm to be a purely decorative design.” She winked. “And that’s only what I can see. Who knows what’s hidden under that suit of yours?”

“I…” Ghost felt heat rising into her face. “I don’t know...how any of that works.”

“It’s fine, we’ll figure it out. I love a challenge!” Lu rubbed her hands together, grinning. “Speaking of which, I still have to show you my project! I told you about the storms, right? How they come through and if you get caught, zap! All your metal bits go down. Which, for me, you know, that’s kind of a lot.” She tapped the metal panel on her chest. “So I’ve been working on something for emergencies, like if we were out—”

“Looks like you two are getting along again— _rust,_ Lu, would you put a shirt on?” Trigger arrived with another load of scrap from the truck. “Gonna short-circuit our Ghost.”

“Can’t put a shirt on with a wire sticking out of my chest,” Lu complained.

Trigger sighed. “Then let me put in your new battery.” They took the new one Lu had pulled out. “Idiot,” they muttered under their breath.

Lu laughed. “Prude.”

Despite their grumbling, Trigger’s hands were gentle as they slotted the battery into place. Ghost watched carefully to see how it was done. Her thoughts were swirling around again, trying to put pieces together. Lu’s story. Trigger’s guns and gruff words and hidden tenderness. They’d called her “Our Ghost”. As though whoever she was, _whatever_ she was, she belonged with them now.

With so much to process, it was a long time before she realized that Lu hadn’t explained what exactly she did to the Enforcer.

 

* * *

 

They fell into a routine with surprising ease. In the mornings, Ghost followed Trigger to the green room, where they switched on the sun lamps and gathered vegetables to supplement their protein packs.

“You didn’t say you were a gardener,” Ghost said, watching them unearth a plant with a bulbous purple root. “When we met.”

“Gardeners aren’t intimidating.”

Ghost shrugged. She’d seen what Trigger did to weeds. She wouldn’t want to be one.

Once Lu woke up, the three of them went to the shop to start the day’s work. Ghost had worried at first that she would be in the way, but there was always something to be done. Sometimes she sorted scrap—she was getting better at knowing what they could use and what they could trade for food and other supplies. Sometimes she helped Trigger do basic maintenance on the truck or followed them as they did their security checks. Sometimes, she joined Lu in her corner.

“Don’t become an inventor, Ghost,” Lu said one day, “It’s not as glamorous as they make it out to be.” She had just finished disassembling and reassembling the power source from Ghost’s bunker for the third time in a row, and she still couldn’t make it work.

“I thought you liked taking things apart and putting them back together,” Ghost said. She pushed the plate of food she’d brought closer to Lu’s elbow, hoping she would take the hint. When Lu got wrapped up in her work, she sometimes forgot to eat.

“I _do,_ when I can figure out how something actually _works,”_ Lu said. “This is clearly still running, but I can’t get it to send power to my Revitalizer.” She picked a vegetable slice off her plate and chewed it absently.

Ghost eyed the Revitalizer, which looked much the same as it had the first time she saw it. The idea was simple: a device that would reverse the effects of storm damage on someone’s artificial parts. In practice, it wasn’t simple at all. Lu had explained at length about magnetic fields and electrical stimulation and nerves, but none of it meant anything to Ghost.

Rather than set off another incomprehensible lecture, she asked, “What about the data storage?”

Lu set the power source aside. “I’ve made some progress, but nothing useful yet.” She retrieved the other device from the corner of her workbench. “I rigged a cable so it connects to my screens. But when I plug it in…” She slotted the cord into place.

Rows of text appeared on the screen. Ghost watched them form, puzzling over the pattern. It was like they ought to mean _something,_ but some element was missing.

“See?” Lu said. “It’s nonsense. Clearly it’s supposed to be run through some kind of filter or program, but I haven’t found a way to decode it yet.”

 _A program._ Missing pieces. Ghosts in the code. “What if…?” Ghost said, then stopped. Maybe it was a bad idea.

“What if what?” Lu asked. “If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them. You _did_ come from the same place as this tech, after all.”

“Well,” Ghost still wasn’t sure. But Lu was sitting up straight now, looking at her expectantly. She didn’t want to disappoint her. “I wonder if...what if you ran it through me?”

Lu stared. “Wait... _what?”_ She leaned forward, suddenly jittering with excitement. “You mean to tell me you have some kind of data port that matches this? Why didn’t you _say_ so?” She sprang to her feet and started clearing space on the workbench. “Oh, this is perfect, we can finally get some answers!”

“I’m not _sure_ it’ll work,” Ghost cautioned. “And I only found the ports last night.” They were cleverly hidden just above her elbow joints, on the undersides of her arms where it was hard to see.

“It’s worth a shot, though!” Lu swept a bunch of spare parts into a pile and dumped them on the floor. “Obviously this tech was keeping you alive—and don’t ask me how _that_ worked, because there’s so much we don’t know about your anatomy and I can’t run tests because Trigger says it’s an invasion of your privacy, but—”

Ghost let Lu’s words flow over her. Her pulse was rising, but whether it was from nerves or from Lu’s excitement catching, she couldn’t tell. Maybe it was both. She did know that the garbled script on the screen had felt...familiar, somehow. Like she could understand it if only she looked at it the right way. Like Lu said, it was worth a try.

“Okay, I think that does it,” Lu said. She held a cable with three prongs: one that plugged into the data storage, one that plugged into her screen...and a third one, which she offered to Ghost. “Hop up,” she said, patting the cleared space. “I don’t know what this will do to you, and I don’t want you collapsing in the middle of the test and unplugging yourself.”

Ghost took a deep breath and perched on the edge of the workbench. She took the cable from Lu. Inspected the end of it carefully. The shape looked right. It should fit.

“Ready?” Lu asked. She was practically bouncing out of her skin.

Ghost attached the cable.

**_Data storage connected._ **

“I…” Something was happening. Things were moving in her head.

“What is it?” Lu stared at the screen, scanning it for changes. “I don’t see anything.”

**_Downloading stored data._ **

“Lu—”

**_Accessing stored data._ **

_“An organized mind is a prepared mind,” the instructor said. She stood at the front of the lab, gaze as sharp as the cut of her uniform. Some of the candidates made comments amongst themselves about the body beneath it, but none of them dared say such things where she could hear. “Only the best will be chosen to undergo the procedure. Those of you who cannot store your memories—even the small ones, the ones you barely remember—will not move on. You may begin.”_

_The candidates turned their attention to the screens in front of them. The exam started simple—sorting objects by color, matching words with their definitions. As it progressed, it became more difficult, more reliant on intuition than conscious thought. The taste of cool water on a hot day. A loved one’s laugh. Spotting a tiny flaw in the painting on a bedroom wall, removing it._

_One by one, the memories went into their boxes._

 

* * *

 

_“Will it hurt?” she joked with the technician. They were fussing with the restraints on her wrists._

_“Not at all,” the technician said. “You’re done. Remember?”_

_Memory struck then—an explosion of pain, the shredding of her mind leaving her body. The cool, emotionless immersion in data, thought suddenly stripped of emotion. Watching, passionless, as they made the changes to her physical form. The roiling confusion as they returned her to her shell and memories sorted themselves back into place._

_“Ah, you’re back.” The technician finished undoing the restraints. “What did I tell you? It didn’t hurt a bit, did it?”_

_Pain was irrelevant. The memory was put away._

 

* * *

 

_“I told you, they aren’t ready for deployment.” The instructor looked angry. She hardly ever looked angry. Strong emotion disorganized the mind._

_“Say what you want, but management says they have to be. The team from Echo lab is almost done with their prototype, and if they get the jump on us—” The department head didn’t finish his sentence, but his meaning was clear. The whole project was at risk. “Look, all they want is a demonstration. I’m sure you can come up with something.” He turned to go, giving her an assessing look as he passed. “Use this one. They like a pretty face.”_

_“A demonstration, is it?” The instructor had gone quiet. There was no trace of her anger left. “Very well, I can arrange that.” She turned, and their eyes met. “Initiate emergency security protocol.”_

_Emergency security protocol initiated. Source: external threat. Task: eliminate._

_She raised her arm, pointed it at the department head, and shot him in the chest._

_The world went up in flames._

 

* * *

 

“What were you _thinking?_ It could have killed her! She could have killed _you!_ ”

“How was I supposed to know it would do that? It’s data storage, she’s a _person,_ it should have just run the information through her arm programming, it shouldn’t—”

“Told you to leave it alone. _Told_ you. She _trusts_ you, Lu, and you do this? How could you?”

The world swam slowly back into focus. She was in a room. Not a lab, but like a lab, with tools and wires and tech. She was lying on a hard surface, covered with something soft and warm. The air smelled burnt.

“Trigger?” That was who the shouting person was, she remembered now. Trigger and…”Lu?”

“Ghost!” Trigger’s face filled her vision. “Blood and sand, I thought we’d lost you.” Relief was obvious even on their stoic countenance.

She tried unsuccessfully to sit up. “Course. I’m right here, not lost.” The inside of her head was spinning, but her body hadn’t moved. She was slumped on Lu’s workbench. “What happened?”

Trigger drew breath as though they wanted to start shouting again, but then thought better of it. They helped her sit up. “What do you remember?”

Ghost reached reflexively for the hole in her memory—and found that it wasn’t a hole anymore. There were boxes there, neatly sorted and waiting to be accessed. Dangerous as a gun to the forehead. She grimaced. “Too much, but nothing that made sense. It _hurt.”_

“What Lu did?” She hadn’t thought Trigger could look more furious, but they did.

“No, not that.” She did remember that, though. “I did it to myself. I offered.” She shuddered. “I think I offered...this, too.” She held out an arm. It hadn’t always been metal. She remembered that now. The cable still dangled from her data port—someone had sliced it. “They said it wouldn’t hurt, but they lied.”

“So you remembered something!” That was Lu, all bright excitement. She had smudges of soot on her face. “Can you do it again? I didn’t take notes last time, so if we can repeat the—”

 _“Lu.”_ Trigger whirled to glare at her. “You can’t be serious!”

“Why can’t I? This is a huge breakthrough! If she remembers how it all works, we can use her to—”

“She’s a _person,_ not something to use! Thought _you’d_ understand that.”

Something was wrong. Lu and Trigger never fought like this. They teased each other, sometimes exasperated but always fond. There was a new edge to their words now.

“What is it?” Ghost asked. It must be her fault somehow. “What...what did I do?”

Trigger tore their gaze away from Lu. “Not your fault, Ghost. You weren’t yourself. I saw your eyes. You were gone.”

“Trigger. Please.” She had to know.

With a sigh, they lifted her up and turned her to face the wall. Or, where the wall should have been. There was a smoking hole next to the map now. One of the screens was gone completely, the other cracked.

“You remembered how to use your weapons!” Lu said.

 

* * *

 

That night, Ghost lay awake in bed while Trigger and Lu had an argument in the next room. Their efforts to keep their voices low were only partially successful; by the time she fell asleep, she knew both of their opinions. Lu wanted Ghost to plug into the data storage and try to recover more memories. Trigger thought this was a terrible idea, and furthermore wanted Lu to give up her own attempts to access the data.

“But who _knows_ what kind of hidden knowledge is in there?” Lu protested when Trigger made this suggestion. “I can’t just give it up!”

“Sometimes things are hidden for a reason,” Trigger said.

The days that followed were quiet. Lu and Trigger were carefully not speaking to each other while trying to act as though everything was normal. Neither of them were very good at pretending. Especially because they told Ghost all the things they should have told each other.

“It’s not that we can’t take risks,” Trigger said one morning. They were weeding the vegetable beds, ripping out unwanted shoots with ruthless efficiency. “I know we have to. Every time we go outside, it’s a risk.”

Ghost gathered the discarded plants and put them in a bucket. They couldn’t be eaten, but they could be recycled into dirt. “Then why go outside?” They had food, and a good supply of water from an underground spring. There was more than enough space for the three of them.

Trigger’s hands stilled. When Ghost looked at their face, they were frowning—not like they were upset, but as though they were turning the idea over like tilled soil. “Be hard without the protein packs,” they said eventually, “we trade for those. And Lu would get bored.”

If Lu wasn’t bored already, Ghost would hate to see what happened when she _was._ Trigger in a bad mood was a looming thundercloud; Lu was a hailstorm, arriving in a whirl of chaos before vanishing again. She tore machines apart and put them back together. She completely reorganized the shop’s storage area, creating new and increasingly nonsensical piles of scrap. More than anything else, she labored over her Revitalizer.

“I just _know_ I can get it,” she said. “I have all the necessary components. Why won’t it just _go?”_

Since at the moment the ‘necessary components’ were sitting in a heap with a tangle of wires jutting from them, Ghost declined to answer that question. Instead, she decided to ask one of her own. “Why exactly is it so important?”

Lu stared at her. Then she drew a deep breath, clearly preparing to launch into a lecture.

“No, I mean—” Ghost hurried to clarify, “It’s to counter storm damage, right? And that’s only dangerous if you go outside, and it seems like...you two went through a lot of danger just to get one piece for it.” She indicated the still-useless power source.

Lu relaxed. “Oh.” She rearranged a few pieces of the Revitalizer and frowned at them. “It must seem pretty selfish, throwing all this effort into a project that wouldn’t be needed if I just stayed indoors. And arrogant to think I can pull it off.”

Ghost stayed quiet. She hadn’t been thinking that, exactly, but she suspected it was what Trigger thought.

“Have you ever wondered,” Lu went on, “why we live in such a big place? It’s really too big for two, even with all this scrap piling up.”

Her voice was pitched to carry, and Ghost could tell that she meant it to. Across the room, Trigger stiffened.

Lu reached up and slid her hand behind a corner of the map. She pulled out a piece of paper and set it in front of Ghost.

“There used to be a lot more of us.”

Ghost heard Trigger’s heavy steps retreating. The door between the shop and the living quarters slammed. She sighed. “Why did you do that?” She didn’t know why it had upset Trigger, but surely Lu did. She had done it on purpose.

“I wanted to talk to you without them breathing down my neck,” Lu grumbled. “They haven’t left the two of us alone since the incident, did you notice?”

She had noticed. It was hard not to, when two people were so clearly at odds and yet spent all their time in the same room.

“Trigger is so protective. But they can’t always save everyone. They couldn’t, this one time, and they can’t let it go.” Lu smoothed a crinkled edge of the glossy paper. It was a photograph, over a dozen smiling faces pointed at the camera. Ghost could see Trigger in the back—the smile looked strange on their face—and Lu in the front with her arm wrapped around another young person.

“When I first joined up, we were in a different place. Smaller, more crowded. We were always tripping over each other. And it wasn’t like here—we had storm protection, of course, but it wasn’t nearly as secure. Enforcers could find us there.” Lu closed her eyes. “So we started looking for a better home.”

“Here,” Ghost guessed.

“Exactly. It wasn’t perfect at first—the cavern was here, but it took a lot to make it livable. We worked in shifts, some people here and the rest at the old place packing. Trigger and I stayed late one night, told the rest of our group they could go home without us. I remember I’d just gotten the door seals working, and I was so excited to show the next shift when they came.” Lu sighed. “But they didn’t come.”

Ghost shivered. “Enforcers?”

Lu nodded. “When we went out looking for them, we found what used to be their truck. Still burning, too far gone to save. Couldn’t even tell who—and so we drove like hell for home, but it was too late.”

There were no words Ghost could think of to comfort her. There might have been, if she dared unpack the boxes locked away in her memory. But now was not the time.

“I wasn’t always like this, you know.” Lu tapped her face in the photo. “Before I met up with them, I was...hard. Desperate. I’d been on my own since before I left the city, and I didn’t care about anything except staying alive. Sometimes I didn’t even care about that.” She let out a long, slow breath. “After this...for a while there, I almost went back to that. Would have been happy to go after the Enforcers with all guns blazing and take as many of them as I could before they got me. But I couldn’t do that to Trigger.”

“Trigger?”

“Only the two of us left,” Lu said. “I couldn’t leave them all alone.”

“Have you told them that?”

Lu looked up, startled. “What do you mean?”

On impulse, Ghost reached for Lu’s hand. It was the metal one, and their fingers clinked as she fit them together. “You two aren’t alone now,” she said. “You have me.” She looked around at the piles of scrap, the unfinished pieces of future success. “This place fits three better than two, but not if two of those people won’t talk to each other.” She gave Lu’s hand a gentle squeeze and let go. “Maybe you should.”

 

* * *

 

Trigger was turning the compost pile and did not look up when Ghost came in. When it was clear she wouldn’t be the first to speak, they said, “She told you?”

Ghost nodded, then realized Trigger couldn’t see with their back to her. “She did. Her version, anyway.” As with everything Lu told her, she suspected there was more to the story.

“Hmmph.” Was it her imagination, or did Trigger sound amused? “Bet she left out the part where she blew three Enforcers out of the sky with her brain. Didn’t know she could do that before.”

“She—really?” Ghost hadn’t realized Lu’s powers weren’t always there. “That must have been...a surprise.”

Trigger snorted. “You have a way with words, Ghost.” They turned to look at her. The skin around their eyes was red and puffy. “Thought at first I’d lost everyone. She was out for a long time. Only knew she was alive by her breathing.”

“Oh.” Ghost went to the pump and ran some water into a bucket. She knew that Trigger usually wanted to wash up after messing around with the compost. “And it’s just been the two of you ever since?”

When she held out the bucket, Trigger blinked. Their face slowly shifted into an expression almost like the one they usually reserved for Lu: fond, perplexed, slightly exasperated. “Yeah,” they said, “Until we went looking for scrap and came back with a stray.”

Ghost laid her hand on Trigger’s arm. It wasn’t metal, but the muscle was solid. They were used to carrying heavy burdens. “I’m glad you did,” Ghost said. “And...I’ll be more careful not to blow any holes in the walls. Though I can’t speak for Lu.” She patted their arm in what she hoped was a reassuring way.

Trigger took the bucket and rubbed the top of Ghost’s head affectionately. “What am I gonna do with two of you?”

Ghost shrugged. “Cook us lunch?” All the emotional talk had made her hungry.

Trigger actually smiled at that. “Yeah, okay.”

 

* * *

 

Later, Lu asked Ghost to sort some scrap at the far end of the shop. Then she stood up and went over to Trigger. “Can we talk?”

The corner where Ghost was working was too far away to hear much of anything, but from time to time she looked up to check on them. Once, Lu was holding out a piece of paper that was the right size to be a photograph. Another time, Trigger was holding Lu, face buried in her shoulder. Eventually they drew apart and went back to their respective tasks. Lu noticed Ghost watching and winked.

 

* * *

 

Things didn’t exactly go back to normal after that, but the tension between Trigger and Lu eased up. So when Lu came in from the lab one night and said she wanted to go on a trading run to a nearby settlement, Trigger didn’t immediately object.

“What are we low on?”

“Ah, well,” Lu rubbed the back of her neck. “I was going to see if they have a spare screen lying around, to replace our busted one. They have better connections to the tech smugglers than we do.”

Trigger let out a low whistle. “Gonna ask an arm and a leg for that.” It was possible to get tech smuggled out of the cities, but it was pricey.

“I have some to spare,” Lu said, wiggling the fingers on her flesh hand. “But seriously—stop making that face, Trigger, I wouldn’t trade my actual _arm—_ I can usually get a discount if I help their out their techie. I think they were looking to upgrade their security, and I might be able to bounce some ideas off her while we work.”

“You mean, you’re going to haul your Revitalizer over there and pick Hacka’s brain on how to make it work,” Trigger said. They were smiling their little half-smile, so Ghost decided they must approve of the plan.

“She’s better at software than me!” Lu protested. “It would be a waste of a trip to not even _ask,_ right?”

“Nothing wrong with asking,” Trigger said. They looked at Ghost. “Well? What do you think?”

“Me?”

“We’re not just going to drag you off somewhere,” Lu explained. “Well, not anymore.”

She meant it, Ghost realized. They wouldn’t force her to go if she didn’t want to. But she doubted they would go without her. “It’s fine with me,” she said. “When do we go?”

The journey took the better part of a day. They rose early to pack the truck: emergency supplies, scrap for trade, a surprising number of weapons. “Enforcers aren’t the only trouble out there,” Trigger told Ghost when she asked about it. “Good to be prepared.” And of course they brought Lu’s Revitalizer, which she’d more or less reassembled. She packed it carefully while Ghost watched.

“You’re bringing that too?” Ghost asked. The data storage was carefully tucked in with the rest, and she could see that its connecting cable had been repaired.

Lu looked over to where Trigger was bundling scrap metal into easy-to-carry blocks. “Yeah, of course. I doubt Hacka will have any more luck with it than we did, but...you never know.” The trouble was, Ghost suspected they _had_ had the best luck they could—it was just that the results were too dangerous to repeat. Her tightly boxed memories certainly suggested it.

There was no point in worrying about it though, so she helped with the packing and climbed into the backseat when they were ready to go. She meant to stay awake and watch the sun rise, but the excitement of the morning gave way to exhaustion. She curled up on the seat and fell asleep.

She awoke to screaming alarms.

“They’re coming!” Ghost bolted uprighgt.

Trigger jerked the steering wheel. Lu whirled to look at her. “What?”

The alarms were screaming only in her head. She knew what that meant now. “Enforcers,” she gasped. “Somewhere.”

Lu frantically scanned the sky while Trigger swore and accelerated. “One? More than one?” Lu asked. “Rust, Ghost, how do you know, I can’t see _anything.”_

Ghost couldn’t see anything either, only feel the pressure pounding in her skull. “More than one. I don’t know, but I feel them.”

“We’re too far from their base, Trigger,” Lu said. “We won’t make it. Gonna have to make a stand.”

Trigger shook their head. “I don’t like it. More than one—you can’t do so many at once, it’ll—”

“We have to,” Lu repeated. “You can hold them off while I go in. Maybe we’ll get lucky, only have two.”

But they didn’t get lucky. When they finally spotted the dark shapes in the sky, Ghost counted at least half a dozen.

“Lu,” she said, softly so Trigger might not hear over the sound of the engine, “Do you think you can take that many?”

Lu shook her head. “Maybe.” She leaned close. “Ghost. Whatever happens, you make sure Trigger keeps going. Okay?”

Ghost swallowed hard. All she could do was nod.

When they stopped the truck, Lu flung herself out and started running toward the distant shapes. “Distance!” she shouted, in answer to Trigger’s bellowed protest. “Don’t want to blow out the truck!”

Understanding dawned in Trigger’s eyes. “Fuck. She’s going to blow _herself_ out.” They snatched up a gun and ran.

“Wait!” Ghost hurried after them. “I thought we were—” This wasn’t the plan. She was supposed to keep Trigger safe. But Trigger was supposed to keep Lu safe. And Lu—

“No one is doing this alone,” Trigger growled. They caught Ghost’s hand and pulled her along. “Together,” they said.

“Together.” It sounded like ‘goodbye’.

Trigger ran fast, but Lu was faster. By the time they reached her, blue light arced away from her to stab the sky.

An Enforcer exploded in a shower of fire.

“One!” Lu shouted. She took a deep breath.

“Two!” Another one dropped like a falling star.

The Enforcers weren’t going down without a fight, though. As Ghost watched, the nearest one raised a weaponized arm and pointed it at Lu.

_BOOM_

The Enforcer spiraled, and its shot went wide. A shower of sand fountained up. Beside her, Trigger growled and reloaded their gun. “Can’t kill ‘em, but we can keep ‘em away from Lu.”

Ghost looked at her hands. She knew they could do something, something that would probably damage the Enforcers at least as much as Trigger’s gun had. But unlocking that meant opening up a memory box. Finding the right one. Putting it away again before she hurt anyone else. If she had time—

“Three!” The damaged Enforcer went down.

The remaining Enforcers were shooting now, even though they weren’t close enough for a direct hit. Dust flew everywhere, making it hard to see where they were or how many were left. Ghost dodged to avoid a piece of flying metal and looked up just in time to see one of them bearing down on Trigger.

“No!” Before she knew what she was doing, her arm came up. There was light, and heat, and a screech of metal as the Enforcer was knocked backward with a hole in its chest.

“Ghost!” Trigger pulled her roughly aside just as another piece of shrapnel flew by. “What did you—”

But there was no time to talk, only time to dodge incoming attacks and distract their attackers so Lu could take care of them. Ghost lost count of the numbers Lu was shouting. She forgot what it felt like to breathe air without dust. Her palms were sore from the energy she sent through them, but she didn’t want to stop. So when the pressure in her skull suddenly vanished, it took her a moment to realize what had happened.

“Trigger—” They looked up from reloading. She reached for their arm to steady herself. “I think...I think they’re gone.”

“Gone?” They looked around, scanning the sky. Then they looked back at Ghost, and past her. “Lu!”

They stumbled over to the heap on the ground. The blue light was out—all the lights seemed to be out. Lu lay still, left arm still outstretched to point at the next enemy. There was a circle scorched into her chest.

“No.” Trigger gathered her up, pressed an ear to her chest. “No no no no—”

“Lu?” Ghost knelt beside them. Lu’s wrist—the flesh one—was so fragile in her hand. She could barely feel a pulse, and it was fading. “No. Oh, no.”

“She’s...we’re too far from their base—” Trigger was standing, turning for where they’d left the truck. “If we get her a new battery, maybe—” They ran for the truck.

Ghost ran after them. A new battery wouldn’t be enough. All the energy, all the life Lu had poured out to keep them safe—however it worked, she’d drained herself. And the last Enforcer had left a mark. Maybe if she had finished her Revitalizer, found a way to tap into the power source from Ghost’s bunker. But she hadn’t, and now she never would.

“No,” Ghost said again, stopping short as she reached the truck. Trigger was fumbling for a new battery and swearing. “NO.” It wasn’t right for Lu to end like this. Not when she’d been so close to the answer. “Trigger, wait. Let me.”

“Let you—Ghost?”

She’d watched Lu disassemble and reassemble the Revitalizer so many times. She knew how it connected to the power source and how it was meant to connect to Lu. And she knew, with sudden clarity, why it hadn’t worked. “She was missing a piece.” She connected a cable to the power source. Gently, she lifted Lu’s shirt and connected her charging port to the Revitalizer. She attached another cable to the Revitalizer—and quickly, before Trigger could stop her, plugged that and the power source into the ports on her own arms.

“Ghost!”

Too late. Just in time.

**_Power supply connected._ **

Blue light jolted through her.

 

* * *

 

_“What are we supposed to do now? The emergency protocol—” the lab technician tugged at their hair, pacing back and forth. “They’ll shut us down for sure.”_

_“Emergency security protocol was a success.” The instructor sounded almost pleased. “They won’t dare shut us down. Let them try.” She looked around at the bunker. It was well hidden, far from the nearest town. “However, the unit is considered compromised. It will go into storage until the rumors die down.” She attached the last of the cables to the unit’s arm. “Initiate protocol: hibernate.”_

_Initiating hibernation_

_The hibernation chamber was dark and cool. The instructor had informed her it would take a while to recalibrate; when she was ready, someone would come for her. The last thing she saw was the door closing as the instructor walked out._

 

* * *

 

“I think she’s starting to come around.”

“What? How can you tell?”

“She twitched—see? There! Her eyes.”

“Back up, Hacka, if she sees your ugly face she’ll probably blast you.”

“Rude!”

“Here, let me.”

The first face she saw when she woke was Trigger’s. “Hey.” Their smile said everything their words couldn’t. She didn't know why she’d once thought their face was unpleasant.

“Hey.” Ghost felt her own face smiling in response. “Did it work?”

Trigger knew what she meant. “See for yourself.” They helped her turn on her side—it _hurt,_ she felt like she’d scorched every single one of her nerves including the ones her metal arms didn’t have—and she saw an equally welcome sight.

“Tried to get out of our agreement, eh?” Lu said. She looked as bad as Ghost felt, weak and bruised and covered in dirt. “You were supposed to keep _Trigger_ safe.”

A laugh bubbled up, though by the time it came out it had turned into a cough. “Can’t do that without you, Lu. We’re in this together.” The three of them made sense. They _worked._ No one was allowed to go off and die.

Lu smiled and reached for Trigger’s hand. Trigger took it and offered their other hand to Ghost. “Guess we are,” Lu said. “Now get some rest, Ghost. We have to get better soon so we can do what we came to do. And then we’re going home.”

Home. It had a nice ring to it.

**Author's Note:**

> A thousand thanks to Elleth for beta-reading this and cheering me on while I was writing. You're the best! <3


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